Rip Taylor
Charles Elmer "Rip" Taylor, Jr. (January 13, 1935, Washington, D.C., USA) is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his exuberance and flamboyant personality, including his wild moustache and his habit of showering himself (and others) with confetti. Rip Taylor's career in show business began after he joined the US Navy, where he started performing stand-up in clubs and restaurants abroad. Although a lot of his material were jokes stolen from acts he saw in USO shows, his signature piece would be to pretend to cry as he begged the audience to laugh. From there, he was able to land a spot on the Ed Sullivan TV show, making close to 20 appearances. According to Taylor, Ed Sullivan would forget his name but used to say, "Get me the crying comedian." In addition to the Ed Sullivan Show, Taylor appeared on The Jackie Gleason Show in several guest appearances during the 1963-64 season as "the crying comedian." He appeared in two 1968 episodes of The Monkees NBC television series, "Monkees on the Wheel" being one, as well as having a cameo in their 1969 special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee. He continued to work as a voice performer in the 1970s NBC cartoon series Here Comes the Grump (as the title character) and in the second The Addams Family cartoon series (as Uncle Fester). Throughout the 1970s, Taylor was a frequent celebrity guest panelist on TV game shows such as Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and The Gong Show, and substituted for Charles Nelson Reilly on The Match Game. He became a regular on Sid and Marty Krofft's Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, playing Sheldon, a sea-genie who lived in a conch shell. In addition, Taylor was also a regular on The Brady Bunch Hour, playing a role of neighbor / performer Jack Merrill. He also hosted a short-lived send-up of beauty pageants called The $1.98 Beauty Show created by Gong Show producer/host Chuck Barris, in 1978. Taylor appeared as a celebrity on the 1990 version of Match Game. In 1979, he was the voice of C.J. from the Hanna-Barbera TV movie Scooby Goes Hollywood. Other appearances include the television show The Kids in the Hall. He was referred to as Uncle Rip by one of the show's characters, Buddy Cole. He also appeared as himself in the movie Wayne's World 2, one of the special guests invited to "WayneStock" after being visited in a dream by Jim Morrison. Taylor is an accomplice of the Jackass crew. In 1995, he performed the intro for the Bloodhound Gang's Use Your Fingers album, and in 2002, he appeared in the final scene of Jackass: The Movie, wielding a pistol that, when fired, released a sign that read "The End." (Taylor's section of the film was originally considerably longer, and ended with him complaining about the heat, and fanning himself with his toupee. This footage was included on the DVD of the film.) He did the same thing at the ending of Jackass Number Two and Jackass 3D. In the credits of the 2005 remake of The Dukes of Hazzard, Taylor shows up in the blooper reel. Category:Actors from USA